Pedagogical Effectiveness of Engagement Levels - A Survey of Successful Experiences

In this paper we survey experiments with program and algorithm visualizations (PAVs) where learning improvements have been detected. We analyze these experiments based on the student’s level of engagement with the visualizations. There are some features present in most of these, successful, experiments. Therefore they should be taken into account as important factors affecting pedagogical effectiveness of PAVs, these features are: narrative and textual contents, feedback to students’ answers and a student centered approach when designing PAV construction kits.